The poem begins: I am turning 65 years of age. And so I am thinking about how am I growing old. How am I becoming an elder? How am I becoming an elde… - Maxine Hong Kingston

No husband of mine will say, "I could have been a drummer, but I had to think about the wife and kids. You know how it is." Nobody supports me at the expense of his own adventure. (p48)

The only way to get any work done-without polling everybody, as in a statistical study in sociology-is to give your own peculiar vision; because that's what's interesting, the way one person sees the world. It's up to other people to ask themselves whether they think like that or not. And if they don't think like you, that should be very exciting to them. They would read about something that they are completely unfamiliar with... I was just in Hong Kong and I loved seeing Chinese who were different from myself. To think of the possibility of another way of being Chinese or being a human being is much more exciting than to see someone just like me.

The lights of the city on hills make a vertical shimmer from sky straight into the water, like a backdrop, like a dream. (p37)